


how rare and beautiful it is to even exist

by ashintuku



Series: I am dissonance waiting to be swiftly pulled into tune [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Multi, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 09:44:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6699919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashintuku/pseuds/ashintuku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Those pretty marks all over your skin, girlie! They're <i>soulstars</i>, don't you know anything?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	how rare and beautiful it is to even exist

**Author's Note:**

> Soulmates in this AU: 
> 
> Soulmates are people who have a strong affect on your life - not necessarily romantic, not necessarily good. Just strong.
> 
> They are shown through different astrological symbols, and you know you're near your soulmate when the coinciding mark reacts in some way: ie warming up, 'singing', sharp pain, or causing a strong emotion.

She was very young when she was left in the care of Unkar Plutt. 

Too young to know any better, really: to know that her family wasn't just leaving for a few hours, or a day, or a week. That her family was just _leaving_ , and the last she would ever see of them was the glow of the ship's vents before it left the atmosphere and her life for good. 

Unkar Plutt was not kind; was not good or gentle or fair. He dragged her to his ramshackle trading post, set her down at a table of dirty, sand-worn parts, and told her to _scrub_ if she wanted to eat that night. She caught her fingers more times on the wire bristles than anyone else, and by the end of the day she was red-faced and crying, fingers bloody scratches and creaking baby-joints. He gave her something green that tasted like fuel and a roll of bread that was more air than sustenance, then told her to find a place in the back to sleep and left her. 

It was not, by any definition, an auspicious beginning. 

The only thing that brought her comfort were the galaxies that spread out along her skin like gentle kisses; starbursts and solar flares and clusters of stars, wrapped around her like promises. She remembered someone telling her that they were connectors - binders. That they were marks that claimed others to her and her to others. 

Unkar Plutt said they were skin blemishes, nothing more, and set her to work until she was old enough to run through the sand dunes of wicked Jakku and bring scavenged pieces of her own. _'No one's comin' for you, girl,'_ he told her, his voice guttural and oil. _'Not a single damned person'._

Rey told herself he was lying. 

He _had_ to be.

~+~

FN-2187 could not remember where he came from; only the nursery where they kept the others until it was time to begin Phase One. 

The droids that glided around were cold, soulless; no personality to them, nothing in their protocols to make them kind or caring. They were efficient. They were timely. They fed the children and bathed them, educated them and put them to sleep. There was no comfort for when a little one woke crying from nightmares. There were no gentle words when someone asked for their mother. 

Eventually, the crying stopped, and the questions, too. Eventually, the children turned efficient like their caretakers, and that was what They wanted. 

FN-2187 could not remember where he came from, but he knew it was warm. Gentle. Guiding hands and laughter in his ear. He knew he had parents, ones who loved him. He knew that, could sense that; could almost hear the lullabies in the back of his head, but he never told anyone this. 

FN-2187 knew, somehow, in his heart, that if anyone ever learned that he could still _recall_ his family's love, that he would be in terrible, terrible trouble. That they would take him away, and he would come back a little Less than he had been before. 

So instead he kept it all locked up, hidden inside of himself; followed instructions and completed his training. Learned how to read, and write, and shoot a blaster. Learned how to formulate attack plans and defensive manoeuvres; how to react when things went wrong and he had to think on his feet. 

FN-2187 never asked what the stars on his skin meant, or why he had them, or why they felt like a connection to something More. 

He felt that it would be bad if he did.

~+~

Poe Dameron only had familial stars on his skin until he was almost eight years old. 

Shooting stars for his mother and father hid in his hairline, and a nebula spanned his shoulder blades for Princess Leia and Han Solo, who meant everything to him like heroes did. The freckling constellations of Ben skittered across his eyes, temple-to-temple, but he had never really felt close to the boy his age; especially after he was taken away by his uncle to train to be a Jedi. 

But when he was eight years old, a sun faded in over his heart, warm and soft and fluttering. He had shown his father, his mother long-passed and still missed, and Kes Dameron had grinned and ruffled his son's hair; telling him that someone was going to be awfully important to him one day. 

Three years later, the sun turned into a galaxy, stars twined with streams, and Poe Dameron knew that these stars were going to make his life very interesting. 

~+~

The first time she ever heard the term _soulstars_ , Rey was sixteen years old and crawling through the belly of an X-wing fighter plane, looking for parts that hadn't been damaged by battles thirty years dead. 

She was with another scavenger, Strunk, who was without his partner for the day; the two of them comparing parts and arguing over what Unkar Plutt would claim to be their worth. 

"That's a half portion, it's got to be!" 

"Oh, less than that, girlie - less than that. Ain't worth much if all the wires are hangin' loose, is it?" 

Rey scowled at the scavenger, shaking her head and grumbling to herself. "Devi would agree with me." 

"I'd hope my star would agree with me." 

"Your what?" 

Strunk looked at her as if she were a stupid child, but he often did that; just a dumb child who should have died, buried in sand, years before, and he was frustrated that she was lasting so long. She was used to Strunk looking at her like this. Most everyone on Jakku did. 

"My star - one of my soulstars - oh, don't tell me you don't _know_." 

Rey hunched her shoulders and gritted her teeth together, callused fingers digging around in the sand-clogged innards of the panel she was rifling through; her pieces sat beside her and her quarterstaff by her foot. The minute Strunk decided to go near her loot, she would be beating him back within an inch of his life, and he would regret his twitchy fingers. 

"Those pretty marks all over your skin, girlie! They're _soulstars_ , don't you know anything?" 

"I know plenty!" Rey shot back, baring her teeth and wrenching out a cog a little too roughly. A piece cracked off, and she swore in one of the different alien dialects she grew up listening to. Living in a port town had its ups and downs, especially when Unkar Plutt was in charge of rations - but listening to the different aliens in the junkyard or the cantina was worth every second of that miser's misery. 

"Flight sims and fancy tongues don't count for nothin', not for scavengers." 

Rey scowled, turning away from Strunk again and looking at the cog to see if she could salvage any of it from the damage. Strunk snorted behind her, scaling down the X-wing fighter's armor and heading towards the blown-out engines in the back; charred black from battle. A few hundred metres from the crashed ship, a TIE fighter's skeletal remains lied in ruins, already picked clean and then broken down for scrap. 

"Well, I don't need _you_ telling me anything - you can't even guess the right value to pieces." 

"Keep tellin' yourself that, girlie, you'll see I'm right." 

Rey ignored him, and when they went back to Niima outpost that evening for their rations, Unkar Plutt gave her one quarter portion for her loot and laughed at her when she questioned him. 

She ignored Strunk as she left, her ears burning. 

~+~

The first time FN-2187 realized that the marks on his skin - the stars, the galaxies, the trails of light - connected him to other people, he was introduced to FN-2003 and felt something at his throat burn. 

FN-2187 did not react to the sudden burning, knowing better than to show any kind of weakness in front of his superiors, but he noticed FN-2003 flinch and thought that he must have felt the burning, too. 

When they were alone in their quarters, two to a room, in bunks, FN-2187 removed his helmet and looked into the reflection of the metal wall, touching the comet that trailed his jugular. 

"You have it, too." 

FN-2187 turned to see FN-2003 without his helmet, staring at him with wide, wide eyes. FN-2187 would always remember FN-2003's eyes as being wide and terrified for the rest of their friendship; a friendship made tense and sour because FN-2003 slipped up and was weak, and FN-2187 always fell back to help him and was strong. It was a friendship tainted by jealousy and antagonism, and when others started to call FN-2003 'Slip' instead of his number, but kept calling FN-2187 by his, he knew he would always be kept at a distance. 

"I've always had it," FN-2187 said, and FN-2003 nodded, tilting his head and showing an identical comet on his own jugular. FN-2187 stared at it; reached out and touched it, and the two of them shook and stepped away from each other. "What are they?" 

"I don't know," FN-2003 said, and FN-2187 could tell he was being honest. It was a feeling he had; he had a lot of those. "Should we tell our superiors?" 

FN-2187 thought about it, and then wondered what would happen if their superiors ever learned that he and FN-2003 were connected in any way, before shaking his head. 

"Best not. We'll just act normal. Okay?" 

FN-2003 nodded, grinning in a way that made him seem somewhat manic. 

"Okay." 

~+~

Poe was fifteen years old when the stars dotting his eyes started to burn, and he rubbed at them all day until one of his friends at the Academy finally gave him a cool, wet cloth and told him to sleep it off. 

He couldn't sleep, but the cloth helped, and every time he closed his eyes he heard screaming and saw bright, burning red light that sputtered like an engine that just didn't want to work. A headache bloomed behind his eyes, and his friends worried enough that they commed his father all the way at Yavin IV, telling him about what was wrong with his son. 

When the burning finally stopped three days later, Poe looked in the mirror and saw Ben's stars practically burned out, faded and nearly invisible against his tanned skin, and he wondered what had happened to him. 

And then his father called and told him that the new school of Jedi had been destroyed, and Luke Skywalker had disappeared. 

~+~

Rey was nineteen, Strunk and Devi had freshly robbed her, and a little BB droid calling itself 'classified' was following her around when she felt her arms prickle. 

The meteor showers on her arms looked no different when she pulled down her arm wraps and stared at them, and before she could think about what it could mean for even a second, a thug was grabbing her while his friend was bagging BB-8, and a voice from behind called _hey_! She ignored it; she had more important things to worry about just then.

When she had successfully dealt with the thugs, freeing BB-8 and explaining to it that the thugs were Unkar Plutt's and someone _really_ wanted it, BB-8 beeped out excitedly as it noticed something; exclaiming _thief_ and _master's_ before she turned to see who it was talking about. 

A man, a little older than her probably, in a leather jacket and dark skin half-covered in sweat, sand and water, clung onto a pole and watched her with wide eyes; standing on the sidelines as she took down the thugs and saved herself. She narrowed her eyes, her arms prickling warmer and warmer. 

"Him?" 

BB-8 confirmed it: claimed he was a thief because that coat was _not his_. She ignored the fluttering in her stomach as she pulled herself to her feet and ran at him, determined to show him what she did with thieves. 

He tried to run. Stupid, really. She easily caught him, knowing the junkyard market better than he ever could, new as he obviously was. 

When Rey questioned him, he spoke with an openness and an honesty that she had never seen in a face all her life on Jakku; sincere guilt and sadness in his voice when he told BB-8 that its master was dead and he had tried to save him. 

It was just as they noticed stormtroopers outside of the junkyard market, Rey having decided she could perhaps trust him, that he grabbed her hand and the meteor showers _sang_. 

But she didn't have the time to question him; too busy running for her life to ask about singing stars. 

~+~

When Slip died, FN-2187 felt something shudder throughout his whole body, and he reached down and touched his friend's neck as his own burned and burned and burned: blood smearing his mask, covering his eyes; fire climbing up around him and heat beating against his back like an uneven tempo. 

Just like before, his blaster hung from his hand, not fired once; and he was sure he was going to get into trouble, just absolutely sure of it. 

The sun on his chest was warming up, slow and smooth and new; the exploding star on his neck was prickling tightly, and he knew that his Captain was watching him. 

When FN-2187 had first met Captain Phasma, his neck prickling like needles into his skin, he had tried his best not to react as she paused in front of him and turned to stare down. She was a giant amongst the 'troopers, towering and shining in chrome. No one could remember ever seeing her face, not even to eat. No one could ever remember seeing her _eat_. 

When she called him to her side a few days later, he was sure he was in trouble for something. Instead she spoke to him, gave him the stern, strict praise of a commanding officer noting one of her soldiers had done well, and then told him to leave the weak and the hopeless behind in order to finish the mission. 

_'Going back will only hurt your team. It is best to leave them behind entirely than risk the mission for them,'_ she told him, advice meant to be taken. But he couldn't, not when it was Slip, even though Slip resented him a little for it because he was raised to hate the weak and therefore hated himself. 

She kept a close eye on him from that day onward, and never mentioned anything about prickling stars; but he was certain their marks were the same, just as his and Slip's were. 

He stumbled away from Slip's cooling body, looking around and breathing heavily; catching something out of the corner of his eye but ignoring it and rocking forward. A village woman froze as he came across her, but fled when he hesitated, and before his dizzy head could settle he was being dragged back to the centre of the village and made to watch the death of an old man and the interrogation of a young one. 

The sun on his chest continued to grow warmer and warmer, and he did his best to ignore it. 

~+~

Poe remembered very clearly the first time he had ever met his hero, Leia Organa, by the weightless feeling he got from one of the nebulae along his shoulders, making him feel like he was flying. When Leia Organa had looked at him, eyebrows raised and a smile on her freckled mouth, he had grinned back at her; baby-bright and cheerful. 

He still felt that every time he met up with her, even as a grown man joining a Resistance to stop evil from claiming the galaxy again. 

His first mission had been maddening and madness, with time limits and espionage in spades. Leia had warned him, from the moment he stepped foot out of the safety of the Republic, that in many ways he was going to be on his own, now; that they couldn't always have people go looking for him when he went missing. 

It was terrifying, but he felt it was worth it. 

His second mission made him wonder _how_ worth it. 

It started with a cave and an egg and a team, before dwindling down to himself and BB-8 on a desert junkyard in a village with no other civilization seen for parsecs. Lor San Tekka, a member of the Church of the Force, a traveller, and the Resistance's ally in this dark time, held secrets that had been entrusted to him for over a decade. When Poe came to his ramshackle hut in the hopes he would help him, the old traveller was only happy to do so. 

"We need him to come back and bring balance back to the Force," he said, pressing a leather sack into Poe's hand; curving his fingers around it as if blessing him to protect it. Poe's fingers tightened, and he smiled a crooked little smile. 

"The General will be pleased to see this." 

"General? To me, she is _royalty_." 

Poe laughed, his shoulder blades bleeding joy into his skin, and then BB-8 came whistling into the hut with distress. 

"We've got company." Poe said, watching as First Order ships loomed over the dunes. "You have to hide." 

"You have to leave." 

He tried. 

He failed. 

~+~

Sitting in the pilot's seat of the junker Unkar Plutt had had for a good portion of her life, Rey felt warmth and comfort and _familiarity_ zip down her back; weak and frail but _there_. The singing meteors on her arms continued to harmonize with the man in the gunner's seat below, and she went through start-up as fast as she could. Ion engines shrieked outside, dipping low and firing at the people screaming and running, and she felt rage curdle in her stomach and sit there heavily. 

"I can do this, I can do this," she whispered, fingers shaking, before suddenly everything thrum-hummed to life and the Corellian freighter was lifting into the air; tilted and heavy-handed but working, thank the maker. 

They hit the ground running, skidding through the sand and barely passing over the structures that served as shelter for the scavengers down below. Faintly she thought she heard Unkar Plutt yelling, but ignored it; and the man's voice sounded over the radio. 

"Stay low! It confuses their tracking!" 

"Right," she whispered, eyes wide. "Hold on tight, BB-8! We're going low!" 

She pushed the lever; the ship dived towards the ground, and her arms sang and spine filled her with comfort and wild confidence. 

~+~

"Ren wants to see the prisoner." 

Sweat beaded his brow, sliding slick down his temple and cheeks and neck; along the faded comet that had been Slip and the biting star that was his Captain. The sun on his chest was warm, still, almost overly hot, and the Resistance pilot in the chair was breathing heavily and bleeding from the temple.

The other guards shoved the pilot forward, and FN-2187 took his arm; the sun burst red-hot and spread throughout his entire body, and the pilot shuddered and gasped, eyes wide. He tugged the two of them out of the interrogation chamber before either of the 'troopers watching could ask questions. 

Leading the pilot down through hallways, the older man stumbling along with his quick steps, FN-2187 pushed him into a side alcove and looked around quickly. 

"This is a rescue. I'm helping you escape." 

"What?" 

He pulled off his helmet, cleaned of Slip's blood and Jakku's sand, and stared into warm brown eyes. The pilot stared back, sweaty and bloody and confused; his hand pressed to his chest as he breathed heavily. 

"Can you fly a TIE fighter?" 

"Are you Resistance?" 

FN-2187 blinked, frowned; shook his head. "No, no, no, _I'm_ rescuing you. Can you fly a TIE fighter?" 

"I can fly anything," the pilot insisted, scowling. FN-2187 nodded, smiling a little; hope and panic combined into something that felt like anxiety. "Why are you doing this?" 

FN-2187 stopped. Thought about it. 

Because he wanted out. 

Because he didn't want to kill anyone for the wrong people. 

Because the prickling on his neck gave him a headache and made him feel small. 

Because the warmth of the sun was making him shake. 

"Because it's the right thing to do." 

"...You need a pilot." 

"...I need a pilot." 

~+~

The faded stars of Ben started to burn the minute the man all in black stepped before him, and Poe knew, despite being told otherwise, that Ben Organa-Solo had survived the destruction of the school of Jedi so many years ago. 

He had survived, and now he was in front of him, masked and echoing Vader, a guttural red lightsabre gripped tightly in his hand and his head twitching as he looked at Poe. 

Poe tasted sand and blood and a little bit of sick in his mouth, and he grunted as he was dragged into the ship and stored away like cargo. He prayed, for a moment, that BB-8 made it far and safe away from the smoking remains of the village. 

He prayed for the sun burning on his chest, wondering who he was leaving behind and wishing he could have met them. 

~+~

His name was Finn. 

His name was Finn, not-a-member-of-the-Resistance, a stormtrooper who left his helmet in Jakku's devouring sands. His name was Finn, and his hands were warm and sweat-slick with nerves and terror; calling out for her as rathtars rolled like man-eating boulders and men in masks carried her onto ships that promised darkness. 

His name was Finn, and the meteors along her arms sang sweet songs every time he reached out and took her hand; singing _home_ and _safe_ and _caring_. 

Han Solo zipped down her spine, comfort and wild confidence in sunburst spades, and Kylo Ren twisted ugly and sinister below her bellybutton, a black hole self-imploding along her skin. Leia Organa, when she met her, settled like a blanket of deep-seated mourning and loss and hope over her neck, a constellation of ever-enduring strength. 

Faintly, far away, the stars scattered across her chest hummed. 

But Finn's meteors _sang_ , and she reached forward and wrapped him in a hug so tight it made her shoulders ache. 

When he wrapped his arms around her waist, the mirroring meteors along his arms joined in harmony with hers. 

~+~

The sun on his chest burst to life, suddenly and rapidly, as the meteor shower along his arms whined and broke off in an off-key crescendo. 

"Poe! Poe Dameron, you're alive!" 

He ran to the pilot, and the pilot ran to him, and the two collided; bursts of warmth that nearly burned spreading through his skin, wrapping around him like the leather jacket snug against his shoulders. 

"You finished my mission, you-- that's my jacket?" 

"Oh--" 

"No, no, no, keep it. It suits you." 

Finn gripped onto Poe's arms, staring at him; his smile fading away, and Poe frowned in worry. 

"What's wrong?" 

"I need your help." 

"Of course." 

He was led down to an underground bunker, and with each step something firm and steady spread along the moons trailing down his back like a spinal cord. When he met Fabled General Leia Organa, leader of the Resistance and boogeyman to child-soldiers, Finn only felt steady and sure. She looked at him, brown eyes kind and tired, and he knew she could help him. 

"My friend. She was taken." 

"Han told me." 

"I have to get her back." 

~+~

Poe knew something was happening when pilots started to rush by his room, pulling on uniforms and yelling orders to each other. 

He rolled out of his bed, rubbed the burning, black stars along his eyes, and tugged on his G-suit after them. 

"Your droid's been spotted!" Testor called back, a star cluster blooming into sparks along his left shoulder. "Takodana! You coming with, Commander?" 

Poe sped up, half-jogging to catch up; his heart in his throat and his chest vaguely burning. A 'trooper with wide eyes and a soul flashed through his mind, and guilt dropped in his stomach. 

Finn had died because he went back for his droid. 

He had to make sure that _meant_ something. 

"Wouldn't miss it!" 

~+~

The planet was cold, and metal, and lifeless; the trees dead and black. The snow was worse than Jakku sandstorms, stinging at her skin and filling her with terrible, terrible cold. 

She ran with Finn towards the reactor, clinging to his hand; following his sure footsteps as they neared the wild comforting confidence of Han Solo and the devouring, painful implosion of Kylo Ren. It felt like a war on her skin, two opposing sides that felt so much like each other but _weren't_ , not anymore. Maybe once, a long time ago, but they weren't now. 

Now they twisted together, devouring each other; the snake eating its own tail, and Rey remembered scavengers picking apart the corpses of fallen ships. Remembered scavengers turning on each other and scavenging themselves into wastes of people. 

Her hands shook, and Finn squeezed her fingers; getting ahead of her and climbing up the ladder of the cold, frozen reactor wall. 

But not even the comforting song of Finn, or the distant hum of the galaxy across her chest; Leia's long-suffering kindness heavy on her neck, could help her as the black hole devoured the sunbursts down her back and Kylo Ren impaled Han Solo on a lightsabre guttering-dying- _dead_.

~+~

When Finn had met Han Solo, the asteroid belt that looped his ribs filled him with empathy and understanding, and it was like (for a little while) having a father, he thought. 

But then the twin suns along his collarbones, close enough to collide, flared out, and the asteroid belt along his ribs faded like Slip's comet, and Finn shuddered and screamed and wished he had truly lost the ability to _feel_. 

~+~

Poe Dameron felt Han Solo die along his shoulder blade, and the flying weightlessness of Leia Organa shuddered and crashed, and he made a run for the reactor once more. 

He had to make it worth it. 

_He had to try_. 

~+~

"I will see you again, my friend. I can feel it." 

She pressed her lips to his forehead, her arms singing a sweet lament, before she turned and left his room. On her way, she passed the pilot Poe Dameron; the galaxy across her chest humming and thrumming around her like a lightsabre. 

Poe turned to her, watching her; aware just as she was aware of what they were. She smiled, and he grinned weakly; the two of them reaching out and clasping hands in something less than affection but more than a passing pleasantry. 

"Keep an eye out on him?" 

"Always. Bring Skywalker home." 

"I'll do what I can." 

She turned away from him, fingers trailing out of his grasp, and she moved to the _Falcon_ where the echo-memory of wild confidence trilled weakly along her spine.

(The wavering hug of constellations along her ribs filled her with purpose, and she leaned forward and dove head-first into the unknown.)


End file.
